Yet another worst possible take from the Daily Mail

Let's imagine for a moment that it's your job to work as a mercenary hack for an extreme-right propaganda rag. Your bosses want you to come up with an article defending the indefensible. 

They're terrified that the Westminster sex pest scandal is going to cost Theresa May the slim parliamentary majority that it cost her £1 billion in bribes to the DUP to obtain, so they want you to write an article defending the sex pests and denouncing their critics. So how would you go about it?

Well this is the scenario faced by the Daily Mail hack Peter Hitchens, and his solution to the problem was to equate the victims of sexual assaults and harassment to "militant Islamists".

The crux of his argument being that if women complain when powerful men grope them or harass them with sexist comments, then males in general are the actual victims, and women in politics should end up wearing a niqab or a burka as a safety measure.

Hitchens begins his torturous path to this absurd conclusion with a simple sleight of hand. he denounces anyone who complains about their abuse/harassment at the hands of a specific man with "the belief that all men should be assumed to be slavering sex predators", which he claims is a view they share with "militant Islamists".

It's interesting to see that Hitchens assumes his audience of Daily Mail readers to be so thick that they couldn't possibly differentiate between an allegation that "a specific man groped me" and an assertion that "all men are slavering sex predators".

Hitchens then tries to elicit sympathy for the sex pests by chastising the victims: "Any male action, any form of words you choose to disapprove of can and will be presumed to be guilty because, well, men are like that. The culprit will be ruined for ever" he whines.

Of course there is always the problem of a small minority of women who make false, malicious or exaggerated accusations against men. Women who not only attempt to trash innocent men's reputations, but also cast doubt on the testimonies of actual victims through their dishonesty. 

But this is not what's happening in the Westminster sex pest scandal, because several of the MPs have already openly admitted what they did (including the Tory MP Mark Garnier was actually allowed to keep his ministerial job after laughing off his massively inappropriate treatment of a female employee as if it was all just jolly japes).

Attempting to elicit sympathy for the alleged perpetrators of sexual harassment as if they're the victims is bad enough, but when many of them have actually already admitted their guilt, then it's just downright sick.

Hitchens' next move is the classic whataboutery tactic.

What about "the biggest constitutional crisis in a Century" he whines? And What about the country "wobbling on the precipice of bankruptcy"?

Under these circumstances, Hitchens opines, women who denounce the sexual misdemeanours of senior politicians are ridiculous, and will be "laughed at by future generations".

The obvious problem with Hitchens citing these specific whataboutery issues is that he makes no attempt to explain how the country ended up in such a parlous position. 

He makes no attempt whatever to explain that the "biggest constitutional crisis in a Century" is the absolute shambles the Tory party are making of Brexit, and the economic weakness of the country is a result of seven years of ruinous Tory austerity dogma.

It's way beyond insincere to raise these issues and just ignore the role the Daily Mail have played in all of this. His fellow Daily Mail hacks relentlessly promoted Brexit despite the fact that the Brexiteers had no plan whatever for how they were actually going to manage the transition, and they poured absolute derision on anyone who dared suggest that investment economics makes more long-term economic sense than the Tories' bonkers "let's cut our way to growth" austerity fetishism.

Hitchens then goes on to dig himself even deeper into his hole by pointing out that "Michael Fallon was one of the worst Defence Secretaries in history" in order to lament that Fallon wasn't made to quit because of his incompetence, but because he's not "safe in mixed company".

Again, Hitchens avoids the Daily Mail's role in all of this. In June 2017 Theresa May handed the British people a wonderful chance to remove Michael Fallon as defence secretary, but the Daily Mail churned out a relentlessly pro-Tory propaganda line for the entire General Election campaign which helped him back into office.

The Daily Mail worked tirelessly to convince their readers to keep Michael Fallon as Defence Secretary despite his obvious dishonesty, incompetence and blabber-mouthed lunacy, and now one of their main columnists is whining about the way that he's gone.

Given the Daily Mail's role in keeping this incompetent buffoon in his job, Hitchen's should actually be grateful that the women who succeeded in removing him by denouncing him as a sex pest. Instead of attacking them, Hitchens should actually be thanking them for clearing up another of the Daily Mail's messes.

After making an absolute fool of himself by citing three Daily Mail messes as more serious problems than sexual assault, Hitchens returns to one of his favourite themes; feminist-bashing.

When he says "the suspicion lingers that much of the current fuss is aimed mainly at making all men look wicked and grubby" he's displaying his paranoia.

When a sex pest is denounced as a sex pest (for stuff like groping junior staff and young journalists, sending sexual text messages to a teenager he only has the contact details for because she applied for a job in his office, misogyny, or sexual harassment) I don't find that I empathise with the perpetrator just because I too have a penis. 

I'm actually glad that they've been exposed as the creeps that they are, because I don't behave like that with women, so why should they be allowed to get away with it just because they've got power. wealth and authority?

Hitchens finishes off his article by proposing "the niqab, the burka, and the segregation of the sexes" as a solution, before having one more dig at the victims by implying that they're suffering from insanity for having spoken out.

In the middle of the article Hitchens prophesied that the victims of sexual misconduct would be laughed at by future generations, but my prediction is different: Future generations will be full of derision should they ever come across this display of paranoid, hyperbolic, and intellectually dishonest victim-blaming from a mercenary hack working for a fanatically right-wing publication that actually helped to create the whataboutery problems he cites as being more important than dealing with the allegations of sexual misconduct he's decrying.

Look at his anachronistic views on issues like love, marriage, and equality of the sexes they'll snigger. Look at the way he displays his shockingly compromised integrity and look at the way he uses intellectually dishonest tricks to fool the audience he arrogantly believes to be his inferiors.

What backwards times people lived in, future generations will wonder, that the people of Britain actually accepted such a repulsive blend of arrogance, divisiveness, misogyny, misdirection, victim-blaming and paranoia published by the propaganda arm of the thankfully long-defunct Tory party!

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

The farcical handling of the Westminster sex pest scandal

The Westminster sex pest scandal is being handled atrociously, both by the political parties and by the media. 

One of the worst aspects is the huge disparity in the way different MPs are being treated by their parties, and by the media.

In the cases of Clive Lewis and Kelvin Hopkins of the Labour Party, and Damian Green of the Tories, all three of the politicians firmly deny the allegations made against them by single accusers. Yet Kelvin Hopkins has been suspended and had the party whip removed, while Clive Lewis and Damian Green have not. 

It's impossible to explain this kind of double standard. Either MPs should get suspended during investigations, or not. You can't have a completely ad hoc system where some get suspended and some don't.

In contrast to the firm denials from three MPs mentioned above, the Tory MPs Stephen Crabb and Mark Garnier have openly admitted their revolting sexual misdemeanours (Garnier laughing his unacceptable behaviour off as if it was just some kind of joke), but they haven't been suspended by their party.

How can MPs who admit their guilt get off Scot free, while (some of the) MPs who protest their innocence get punished?

Then there's the Tory MP Charlie Elphicke who has been suspended from the Tory party and reported to the police for "serious allegations". He is protesting his innocence but has  been suspended from the Tory party. 

However the details of the allegations against him have been kept secret, so after a day of the mainstream media fixating on the unsubstantiated and strongly denied allegations against the two Labour MPs who protest their innocence, the media barely covered the Elphicke allegations because there are no "juicy details" for them to fixate upon on.

Then there's Michael Fallon who preemptively resigned as Defence Secretary with an admission about his inappropriate behaviour with women, but he avoided getting suspended from the Tory party despite openly admitting his guilt. Theresa May decided that instead of admonishing him or suspending him, she'd actually send him a glowing love letter to tell him what a wonderful guy he is!

Then there are the two dozen plus Tory MPs who stand accused of sexual misdemeanours by their own party in the Tory Sex Pest Dossier, and the evidence that Theresa May was warned three years ago that the Tory whips collected details of sexual abuse by their MPs in order to blackmail them into compliance.

The existence of the Tory Sex Pest Dossier (which jumbles up allegations of extreme sexual misconduct with basic blackmail material like consensual affairs between Tory MPs, unusual sexual proclivities, and an apparently false claim against the MP Rory Stewart), and the statement from Theresa May's former communications director Kate Perrior explaining how the culture of blackmail was still ongoing under Theresa May's leadership are both absolutely damning, and should be one of the main elements of the scandal.

But somehow, despite the Tory whips office being at the centre of the scandal, Theresa May saw fit to actually promote her two most senior whips. She caused a storm of internal dissent in the Tory party by promoting her Chief Whip and close personal ally Gavin Williamson to replace Michael Fallon as Defence Secretary, and then she promoted his deputy Julian Smith to Chief Whip to replace him.

So not only are the Tories still studiously ignoring allegations that their whips office have used allegations of sex abuse as blackmail material for party political advantage, they've also promoted the two most senior whips at the centre of these allegations!

The Labour MP Rupa Huq is absolutely right that the House of Commons has "no real structure for complaints" and that the rules on sexual harassment are "lax if not non existent".

It's hardly surprising that sexually inappropriate behaviour has been happening in such a large workplace, especially in one with no clear rules and procedures for sexual misconduct, but the way complaints are being dealt with in completely ad hoc manner by the parties is totally unacceptable. It's created a situation where three Tory MPs who have openly admitted sexual misdemeanours have avoided suspension from their party, while one Tory and one Labour MP have been suspended despite firmly denying the accusations against them.

The next thing to note is that the press have focused much more negative attention on MPs when the allegations are made public, than when the party keeps the actual details of the allegations under wraps (as the Tories have done with the Charlie Elphicke case), which obviously gives the political parties a clear incentive to bury the details of the allegations as much as possible in order to avoid negative publicity.

Then there's what I consider to be the core element of the scandal, which is the way a very senior Tory adviser has admitted that the Tory whips office used accusations of sexual misconduct in order to blackmail MPs into compliance, rather than launching investigations and working to ensure the safety of people like journalists and junior staff as a first priority.


Yet the two men at the very centre of this scandal have actually been handed promotions!

The major problem is the way the parties are currently dealing with the cases in a bizarre "make it up as we go along" manner that punishes people who deny any wrongdoing, lets people off Scot free when they openly admit being creepy sex pests, and then actual hands promotions to two Tory whips who stand accused of having used allegations of sexual misconduct as blackmail material, rather than doing anything whatever to actually deal with the inappropriate behaviour.

The way the whole thing is being handled is an absolute farce. 

If our political parties can't even deal with a scandal like this without implementing glaringly obvious double standards, and actually promoting people at the epicentre of the most damning accusations, then how on earth can they be capable of actually running the country in a decent manner?

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Is it any wonder more women don't speak out about sex pests?

We all know that the Daily Mail is a despicable hard-right propaganda rag with a long history of launching sickening attacks on people, stretching all the way back to their attacks on Jewish refugees back in the 1930s when they were propagandising for Adolf Hitler and imploring their readers to join the British Union of Fascists.

Recent Daily Mail hate campaigns include their constant bombardment of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant front pages; attacking a dead war hero as "evil" and "un-British" just because his son went on to lead the Labour Party; attacking judges as "enemies of the people" for daring to defy Theresa May's autocratic effort to bypass parliament; attacking non Brexit fanatics as "saboteurs" who deserve to be crushed; and attacking university academics who dare to speak about Brexit in anything but the most gushingly positive terms.

All of these Daily Mail hatchet jobs are deeply concerning for their divisiveness, their extreme-right sentiments, their lack of respect for democracy and the rule of law, and the degrading anti-intellectualism that the Daily Mail editorial staff clearly want to foster in their readers.

However the Daily Mail's latest hatchet job just goes to show that their servitude to the Tory political establishment has become so repugnant that they've actually set about smearing someone who claims to be a victim of sexual harassment.

I have no sympathy for Kate Maltby's right-wing politics whatever, but when she said that the Tory MP and First Secretary Damian Green touched her inappropriately and sent her sexually suggestive text messages, she deserves to be believed, not smeared and harangued in the press.

Damian Green (Theresa May's right-hand man) has already instructed libel lawyers to take Kate Maltby down, and his mates at the Daily Mail have waded in to support him with a full page spread of vitriolic attacks against the young journalist, calling her a "very pushy lady" and accusing her of playing a "poor little me act".

The Daily Mail have never attacked her like this before, when she was just a compliant little rich girl hanging around the Tory party, but as soon as she speaks out: Bang - here's a double page spread of absolute vitriol.

One of the most grotesque things about the hatchet job is the way the Daily Mail claim that she's "a woman determined to make it in politics - whatever the cost".

It's absolutely crazy to imagine that making allegations of sexual misconduct against one of the most senior politicians in the country is a way of advancing her political career. 

Everyone knows that countless women (and not just a few men either) have kept quiet about the sexual harassment/abuse that they've suffered at work because the perpetrator is in such a position of power they could easily wreck their careers.

If Maltby's accusations against Damian Green turn out to be true, then there won't be a "cost" either. Her decision to speak out will have resulted in a Tory sleazeball being exposed for what he is: Not just a man who touches young women inappropriately, but one who actually tries to sue them for daring to speak out about it!

If on the other hand it turns out Maltby invented or exaggerated the incidents (I'm very unsure why she would have) then her reputation will be left in tatters, but until it's established which of them is telling the truth, the sympathy has to be with the victim.

By wading in to attack the woman who made the claims, the Daily Mail have not just shown their ugly bias in favour of the Tory establishment either, they've also provided clear evidence of why so many sexual harassment/abuse victims are afraid to speak out.

Why would anyone speak out against rich and powerful sex pests when they know that the sex pest's friends in the mainstream media are likely to launch this kind of repulsive hate campaign against them just for daring to speak out?

Anyone who is familiar with the Daily Mail knows that they've got a long history of doing the worst possible take on things. From their pro-Hitler propaganda in the 1930s, through their disgusting anti-gay "abortion hope after gay genes finding" headline in the 1990s, to their recent vitriolic attacks on any judges and academics who dare to question Theresa May's shambolic and profoundly anti-democratic handling of the Brexit process. 

So a double page spread of vitriolic attacks on a woman who claims to have been the victim of the inappropriate sexual behaviour of a high profile Tory MP is just another example of a worst possible take from the depraved right-wing hacks at the Daily Mail.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Theresa May's response to Michael Fallon's resignation just got even worse

Theresa May's handling of the sex pest scandal has just got even worse!

It seems difficult to imagine a way that she could have topped sending Michael Fallon a love letter in response to his resignation as defence secretary over his indecent treatment of women, but within the space of a day she's found a way.

Theresa May has reacted to the scandal by promoting her chief whip (and personal ally) Gavin Williamson to Defence Secretary, and promoted his deputy Julian Smith to chief whip.

The Tory whips office should have come under immense scrutiny given the way they stand accused of using allegations of sexual misconduct by Tory MPs as we'll tell your wife" type blackmail material to ensure uncritical loyalty to the party.

If the accusations that the whips office use these kinds of blackmail tactics to ensure party loyalty stand true it explains a lot about why so many Tory MPs have continually refused to rebel against the party line, even when the tabled legislation was absolutely toxic (the rape clause, Bedroom Tax, refusing pay rises to emergency service workers after Grenfell Tower, condemning hundreds of thousands more kids to poverty ...).

Numerous Tory MPs have responded with dismay to Theresa May's decision to promote a personal ally instead of someone with more knowledge of the MoD. Several have pointed out that it would have made a lot more sense to promote a junior defence minister to such a critical role. Others have complained that this unwarranted promotion of a close personal ally rather than someone with greater experience has made Theresa May look even weaker than she already did before.

The former head of the UK army (and unelected peer) Richard Dannatt criticised the appointment saying that the decision to appoint such an inexperienced defence minister was all about Theresa May "bolstering her position within the cabinet".

Still, putting her personal self-interest above the best interests of the nation is hardly breaking new ground for someone as ruthlessly self-serving as Theresa May is it?

Few Tories have pointed out the indecency of handing promotions to her two top whips just one day after Lisa Nandy exposed her for having done nothing about accusations that the Tory whips office has a history of using allegations of sexual assaults in order to force loyalty from MPs. However several people have noted that May blasted the opportunity to appoint a woman as chief whip, which would at least have given the slightest impression that she now gives a damn.

At the time it seemed unlikely that Theresa May could top her decision to send Michael Fallon a gushing love letter instead of admonishing him for his unacceptable behaviour, but she's managed to make the whole situation even worse by putting her own self-interest first again, and picking a close personal ally to replace him as defence secretary, rather than somebody more qualified to do the job.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

The Tory sex dossier is an absolute mess

I've seen an uncensored copy of the Tory sex pest dossier and it's an absolute mess. The big problem with it is that it's not actually a list of MPs accused or suspected of sexual misconduct, it's more like a list of sex-related issues that could be used to blackmail MPs into silence or conformity.

Thus the list combines details of absolutely outrageous sexual misconduct, alongside stuff like extramarital affairs, consensual relationships, and the unusual private sexual proclivities of certain MPs (all ideal blackmail material).

Most of the details are very sketchy, and restricted to a single sentence, or even just a few words. For example the entry on the International Trade Secretary Liam Fox is nothing more than "Adam Werrity". 

It's impossible to gather whether this refers to what the public already know about Liam Fox breaching the ministerial code by allowing Adam Werrity access to classified meetings and official secrets, or whether the Tory party know that there's more to the Adam Werrity scandal than the public were ever told.

In a lot of cases it's simply impossible to tell whether the sexual conduct was consensual or not. 23 of the 40 cases involve MPs' researchers and office staff. In some cases it's obvious that there was harassment involved, but in others it's impossible to tell if what happened was fully consensual or not.

One thing that is absolutely clear is that this dossier was never intended as an exercise in identifying unacceptable sexual misdemeanours like sexual harassment and assaults, otherwise it wouldn't include numerous cases of tittle-tattle like private sexual proclivities, apparently consensual affairs between Tory MPs, and use of prostitutes.

One thing that is very odd about the list is how it names two female Tory MPs for having had sexual relationships with the same male Tory MP, but the male Tory MP isn't included on the list himself.

It appears very much as if the dossier holds female Tory MPs to a much lower standard of what constitutes sexual misconduct, apparently just in order to fill out the list with a few female names. 

One of the most serious cases on the Tory dossier is the case of a married Tory MP who apparently had an affair with a researcher in his office, and then pressurised her to have an abortion after she got pregnant. I thought about naming the guy, but then it struck me that the victim in this case deserves privacy if they don't want their experience to become public knowledge. Since there's a strong possibility that they could be identified if I chose to release the name of the MP who did it to her, it would be irresponsible to name him.

After Guido Fawkes released a heavily redacted version of the dossier many people have been speculating about who the Tory party have identified as "perpetually intoxicated and very inappropriate with women" might be. I don't feel that I'm breaching any victims' confidentiality by saying that's the Tory MP for Beckenham Bob Stewart.

Four other male Tory MPs that this document suggests women should be very wary of are the First Secretary Damian Green, Theresa May's private secretary George Hollingberry, the DWP minister Guy Opperman, and the Tory whip Chris Heaton-Harris (author of the McCarthyite University letters). They're all listed as being "handsy" (which is apparently a quaint euphemism for "a groper").

Another case that leaps out is the Tory MP Nigel Evans. The internal Tory document accuses him of being "inappropriate with male researchers - long history". The long history bit here is key. If people in the Tory party knew that this guy had a long track record of being sexually inappropriate with junior staff, why was nothing done to actually protect junior staff from his inappropriate sexual behaviour?

The Tory dossier also includes two examples of male Tory MPs apparently paying women to be quiet (one former cabinet minister, and one current cabinet minister) and the dossier also accuses another current cabinet minister of having an injunction against him for inappropriate behaviour with a woman.

One of the weirdest inclusions is the former disabilities minister Justin Tomlinson who is listed as dating his researcher, but that's already public knowledge after he ditched his wife for his 25 year old assistant Katie Bennett in 2016.

As I mentioned at the beginning, a minority of the details included in the Tory dossier are clearly private sexual proclivities of the kind that tabloid rags would crawl all over, but don't constitute non-consensual sexual misdemeanours like harassment or assault at all. 

I decided not to publish the whole document because I have no interest in exposing these people for their personal sexual tastes. As much as I detest them for callously and uncaringly imposing the economically ruinous and poverty inducing policies of their party, I actually have a bit of sympathy for them over the way they've been listed by their own party alongside a bunch of actual sex pests, just because they apparently like a bit of kink in their sex lives.

I didn't want to be responsible for outing people just because the Tory party consider a bit of kink to be as bad as being a serial sex pest, but it's obvious that if I've seen the document, it's going to leak out into the public domain sooner or later. So I'm in the unusual position of actually feeling a bit sorry for a few Tory MPs.

All in all the Tory sex pest dossier looks an awful lot more like a poorly cobbled together blackmail list than anything resembling an internal Tory party effort to identify and properly deal with actual sexual misdemeanours. 

The suspicion that it's actually a blackmail list fits with what Theresa May's former communications manager Kate Perrior said about the Tory whips collecting dirt in order to "use it to make sure that MPs know that other people within the party know exactly what they’ve been up to, and that behaviour either is not acceptable, or it will be used against them – you will vote in a certain way or we will tell your wife exactly what you’ve been up to".

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Legal note: All of the accusations in this article are made in the Tory sex dossier. I had no role in compiling the dossier, and this article simply offers commentary on the contents. I have been careful to qualify all commentary with the fact that these are accusations by others within the Tory party, not established facts.

Michael Fabricant tried to claim drunken sex pests are "blameless"

In a BBC Newsnight interview the Tory MP Michael Fabricant laughingly tried to dismiss the sex pest scandal as a "witch hunt" and attempted to make out that people who carried out sexual harassment/assaults that happened when "everybody was sloshed" are somehow "blameless".

The first thing to note is that the dossier of more than three dozen Tory sex pest MPs isn't a "witch hunt" at all, it's a list compiled internally by the Tory party which was then leaked.

Another factor that differentiates the sex pest scandal from a "witch hunt" is that the victims of a "witch hunt" are usually blameless (or guilty only of transgressing some harsh and restrictive social or political convention), while the vast majority of Tory MPs named in the sex pest dossier have done massively inappropriate things, often to junior members of staff or to journalists. 

Something that would actually qualify as a witch hunt would be an effort to criticise/abuse/shame the victims of sexual misconduct into silence (trivialising cases of sexual misconduct and victim bashing does seem to be the sex pest containment strategy adopted by elements of the right-wing media, including The S*n).

The next thing to note is that drunken sex pests are not "blameless". Drunkenness is no excuse whatever for sexual misconduct. Even when drunk it's simply not difficult to tell whether your sexual attentions are wanted or not, and it's definitely not difficult to know that  it's inappropriate to drunkenly grope young journalists, or that junior employees in your workplace are off bounds (even if the place you work happens to be riddled with taxpayer subsidised bars where you and your mates hang about getting "sloshed" instead of concentrating on your jobs).

The next thing to note is that (as he almost certainly knows himself by now) Michael Fabricant is one of the MPs named in the dossier of sex pest Tory MPs.

I guess time will tell whether Fabricant tries to use drunkenness as an excuse in an effort to downplay the case of his own inappropriate sexual behaviour in the sex pest dossier ...

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR